Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Poker Justice

I began last nights play by messing around at a laddys $30 nl 6 max table.The average pot was $14 and I tried to experiment a little by playing more aggressively preflop.I left 9 cents up after 20 mins so I’m not sure if it worked!

I checked Pokertracker and over 17.5k hands at Ladbrokes $50 nl 6 max I’m earning 8.5 bb/100, so at first I was very wary about deviating at all from what has worked for me since I began playing.Most of those 17.5k hands have been at very loose ,high average pot tables with one or two ( or even a table full of ) maniacs and I feel my style has become specifically tailored to making money at those tables, but is not a style which would be a big winner in more passive games.

At those Laddys maddys loose goose games late on Friday and Saturday nights I’m quite happy to limp a lot when I can and my game is all about trapping and winning big pots.I don’t mind appearing to be the type of weak, meek type that can be bossed around and shoved off hands because I’m patient enough to wait until the right moment before commiting my stack.

I suppose, what I’m trying to say is ,that for most of my online poker life, I’ve not played in average run of the mill type games.This leads to higher variance,a more rigid style and faster burnout.Burnout was why when I began my variance nightmare in September ,I decided to play more sng’s and focus on them.The change of pace and new situations I’m still learning to deal with in sng’s have helped keep poker fresh for me.

To last night and after my short $30 session I played in Laddys late night $10 ( $3.5k gtd) Crapshoot. I made a raise to steal from late position with A3 after about 1/2 hr of card dead play when I realised ( ok I'd been watching tv) that the UTG ( first to act) player had already made a raise.Thankfully along with one other player,the UTG player just called and didn't reraise.I was saved by the flop falling 3 3 8.The UTG player went all in and as I had him covered I just called (hoping to trap the other caller).The other caller stayed in the hand and I knocked two out and began building my stack.

I was trying ( as per Luckos style and Tripjax's recent mtt strategy post) to keep pounding away when I had position and not go into my shell too much.The top 30 paid and although 30th paid $24 I was trying to purge myself of my usual "just make the money then see what happens" attitude.

With 33 players left ( 12th with 24k) I look down to KK and when it's folded round to me in the small blind I make a min raise to 4.5k ( blinds 1.5/3).Now to me I may aswell have typed "AA or KK" in the chat box but the villian ( same stack size as me) thought I was at it and raised it up to $10k.I considered the stage of the tournament,his stack size and the high possibilty it seemed I had run my KK into AA but I reckoned he thought I was simply stealing so I went all in.Bottom line is he called with A6,hit his Ace on the turn and I RFTW ( ram fist through wall).32nd.hmmmmmf.

I had no regrets about the way I'd played it so I gave myself a mental shakedown and hit a Party 6 max $50 nl table.To cut another long story short my Aces beat Kings all in preflop for a $37 profit after 10 minutes play and I logged off and went to bed happy with my nights work.

Not so happy with my GT+ as the HUD only seems to be giving me one or two sets of stats instead of the full tables.My laptop did say it was short on virtual memory ( whatever that is)but I'm a bit annoyed because GT+ is a very valuable tool at the cash tables.

5 Comments:

You did the right thing. You take down that hand and you are primed for a final table run. Keep playing it like that...the bubble is where you can pwn the chips...especially when players are putting a ton of chips at risk with A6...